The Importance of Data Compression for Energy Efficiency in Sensor Networks

First, we demonstrate that not only does data compression help reduce the communication latency in a sensor network (as one would expect) but that it can also be used to gain energy efficiency since data compression reduces the energy spent transmitting data - which is one of the most energy- hungry tasks in a sensor network. Through simula- tions we show that data compression can bring more energy efficiency to a network than does recently proposed combinations of routing and data aggrega- tion. Second, we propose a new viewpoint for data compression in sensor networks that measures dis- tortion based on the compression scheme's impact on statistical inference tasks (e.g., detection, estima- tion, recognition, etc.) and makes trades in a Rate- Energy-Accuracy design space. The usefulness of this idea is demonstrated through a particular sen- sor network application: object location in sensor- gathered images.